Tag Archives: liz fox

Friday 19th April 2024 – YOU HAVE NO IDEA …

… – or maybe you do, I dunno. I know very little of your personal habits – just how absolutely wonderful it is to be standing underneath a constant stream of hot water out of a shower outlet after all these months of being without.

Now that my emergency backpack has arrived, complete with wash kit, spare pair of undies and the like, I closed the door to my room, put something to stop the bathroom door being opened, and away I went underneath the little shower tucked away in the corner of the bathroom.

Of course, it stopped my little student nurse from coming in to scrub my back and massage my clavicles, but it also stopped the retired Bulgarian female weightlifter from doing the same, and also stopped the nurse from coming in to remind me to tell her when I’ve been to the bathroom

And I’ll tell you now that it was heaven.

While we’re on the subject of the massaging of clavicles … "well, one of us is" – ed … I had a visitor during the night.

Actually, I had several because it was quite a mobile night but the most important of them all was Zero. It’s been a while since she’s put in an appearance, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but there she was last night and wasn’t it nice to see her?

All I need now is for TOTGA and Castor to come back to see me but I have a rather depressing feeling, at least about Castor. As for TOTGA, it’s not quite two years ago that … well, never mind.

So last night after I’d finished the notes and put them on line I had a pause and then attacked the notes for Monday, which are NOW ON LINE in a basic form. I’ll add the dictaphone notes in due course, whenever that might be.

It was after midnight when I went to bed and what with 05:00 diabetes checks and the like I was expecting a turbulent night.

And I was right too, but for totally unexpected reasons. As I mentioned, Zero came to see me. We’d been going to the local pub, a group of us of all ages of people. I’d made a few enquiries along the way and I’d worked out which was everyone’s favourite biscuit. There was a young girl, probably about 9 or 10 or so who loved chocolate, there was Zero who loved a certain type of biscuit etc so what I’d done ready for when we’d be going that Saturday was that I’d been to the pub on the way home from the shops and dropped off the biscuits. We rounded up everyone and prepared to go down to the pub at lunchtime. The first thing about which we talked was “a drink for the little one” – of course, she wasn’t that little. She wanted something or other. I asked her what she wanted to eat so she mentioned “biscuits”. I pulled out a pile from under the counter and had a chocolate in my other hand. I said “right, which biscuit do you want to swap for this chocolate?”. I wasn’t given any choice because the chocolate disappeared immediately. It was the same with Zero. She chose her favourite biscuit and had that as well as the other ones that were there and wolfed it down. I began to talk to her then after everyone else had had their biscuits. Zero and I began to have a really good chat. There was some paperwork involving her that needed doing so I thought that I may as well sit down there and do that while everyone is busy and maybe persuade Zero to come over and help me fill it all in.

Then another girl who has appeared once or twice in this rubbish previously puts in an appearance. It’s as we thought, with all this turmoil going on during a school dance or something we’d all been separated because we can’t behave ourselves. I’ve been put over one side and ended up dancing with this girl but I’m busy fighting her for a little more than she’s prepared to give me, like most teenage boys back in those days. There was something else going on with one of the other girls etc so in the end the teacher called a halt to the proceedings and dragged the lot of us, the entire group, down to see the headmaster and began to recount all of the problems that she was having with us and who’s been doing what wrong. Of course he picks on me and begins to give me a really good lecture as if it’s all my fault but it’s probably only some of it and everyone else was probably to blame for a lot.

And there’s nothing new in any of that either. Whatever was going on wherever it was always seemed to be my fault, even though it was nothing to do with me.

It reminded me of a tale of woe that a friend’s daughter in the USA once told me. She was 11 and had a 7 year old brother.
"Whenever I do anything wrong, my brother tells my mom on me and she yells at me" she said once. "But if he does anything wrong and I tell my mom on him, then she says it’s my fault for not watching him properly and yells at me"
That story has a very, very familiar ring as far as I’m concerned.

But there’s a funny story about a similar situation with the children of my friend Erika in Georgia. Her two kids were about 6 and 2 and the time.
"Mom!" shouted the 6 year old. "… (the two year old) … has a choking hazard in her mouth!"
So mom dashes to the rescue and removes the offending article
"Mom!" said the 6 year old in a tone of admonishment "I think you really MUST watch us better!"

Anyway we we were back in that dream again. The teacher was giving her report. One of the younger girls was up to some kind of mischief. That girl from just now was still there. It was obvious to the teacher that there was some kind of … errr … inappropriate behaviour (especially as she was a couple of years younger than me) between the girl and me that was beginning to get out of hand in the middle of one of the songs. There was a third thing happening so in the end she decided to call it all to a halt and drag us all before the headmaster who hopefully would lay down the law and even more hopefully we might all listen to what is being said and take note.

I have to admit that I admired the optimism of some of these new teachers who came to our school straight from University

It was as I said. I was messing around with this girl. There was someone else there messing around and Zero put in another appearance doing something – I think that it was she who was singing falsely at the end. Anyway we were all passing through a group of china and the Headmistress was annoyed in case we fell over and broke it all so she read The Riot Act to us all. Generally, it was the kind of place where we wished that we’d all gone home because we’d really all been getting out of hand just then and making the teacher’s life difficult.
(…And if I’ve been fooling around with another girl – no matter who it is – when Zero is there I ought to be ashamed of myself and go home in disgrace…)

But there was no sense of shame or guilt about any kind of interaction that took place between the teachers and the pupils. It was the Law of the Jungle, them or us even when it came to a group of a dozen boys bodily picking up a teacher’s car and wedging it between two brick walls. “That’ll teach her! Get out of that one!”

My own preference was a War of Nerves, but the less said about that the better in an open forum.

They awoke me for the blood test at 05:00 and also for the diabetes test, which I passed, and so I could go back to sleep.

But not for long because I soon had the morning chorus of people around doing all kinds of things and stopping me doing anything else for a while.

Breakfast then came, complete with jam, so I was left alone to transcribe the dictaphone notes for a while.

My faithful cleaner asked me if they had told me whether I could go so I told her “no news” and 30 seconds after I sent it, they came to tell me that they’d ordered my taxi for 15:00. That was when I hit the bathroom.

Doctor n°1 came to see me when I was packing and told me that I could go, seeing as my results had improved. So I told her goodbye and thanks, that I was sorry to leave and that I hoped that I’d see her again. She blushed again and I kid you not, she skipped – really skipped – out of the door as if she was about 7.

As usual, the taxi was late coming but the driver was someone who had taken me to Paris once so I knew him. We were back quite quickly and my faithful cleaner was waiting to help me up the stairs. I really don’t know what I’d do without her.

Once inside I had a hot chocolate and apart from the banana-flavoured soya drink that I’m currently drinking, that’s it. I’ve not moved from my chair, not even to make any food. I just can’t.

Liz was on line so we had a good chat and now I’m off to bed in my nice clean bedroom – my cleaner has been busy while I’ve been away. It’s probably taken her all week to do what she’s done.

So after Zero’s dramatic reappearance last night, who’ll be coming to see me tonight? My money is of course where it usually is – on one of my family coming along uninvited.

It’s hard to believe though that Zero turned up a second time and I was …. errr …. busy elsewhere. I’m clearly losing my grip. But at least I noticed her. Just imagine if I hadn’t.

Still, I’m not alone there. A friend in the Army was once selected for camouflage training. He simply didn’t go and was later commended for his disguise and attention to detail. It fooled everyone apparently

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Monday 8th January 2024 – NOW THAT I …

… have figured out how to tether my phone to my computer using “bluetooth”, I can access a phone hotspot with the computer and post the days’ entries directly.

In fact, you might have noticed that the completed entries for the last 3 days are now already on line.

Once again, I make no apology for anything that is contained therein that might distress or upset people.

Firstly, I have no control whatever over what goes on in my head during the night. And how I wish that I did! I’d have Zero, Castor and TOTGA in there all the time, with a succession of other people who have been so nice to me in the past. Even Nerina. After all, she had a lot to put up with in the old days.

Secondly, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … as this illness unfolds and heads towards its inevitable climax, the state of my mental health is just as important as the state of my physical health and needs to be controlled in a similar manner. And so any intemperate or unpleasant outburst needs to be recorded in the same way that a blood pressure recording is.

Thirdly, these are stressful times and you have no idea. Having a blood test on Wednesday, a desperate ‘phone call on Thursday and a 350-km dash in a taxi early on Friday morning is enough to tell you that something has gone horribly wrong.

And so here I am. Like the famous Maréchal MacMahon, "j’y suis, j’y reste" – “here I am and here I stay”.

So here I stayed, all through yet another miserable night of doors banging, people talking, trolleys rattling and the like. And by 06:00 I’d given up all thoughts of sleep.

Mind you, with the amount of stuff on the dictaphone, and no hallucinations either, I must have done a lot of sleeping at some point somewhere.

First port of call is the bathroom for a wash and brush up and to put on my day clothes. Then an endless stream of visitors to see me – nurses, nursing orderlies and the like, taking my temperature, taking my blood pressure, giving me my medication etc. You can imagine.

There’s been a change of crew too and it took “some negotiation” to have a second roll of bread when breakfast eventually came.

They aren’t very willing to hand out the coffee either and as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, that is a catastrophe of tsunami-like proportions.

Once the breakfast was out of the way I sat down to try to decipher the huge mass of notes from the night. The girl who was here a couple of nights ago was there again last night, at school. We were all at school and it was the fancy dress ball so everyone was dressed in fancy dress. I had on a pair of tights and a girl’s skirt which actually belonged to a girl with whom she was friends but I’d carefully concealed it about me somehow even though I was wearing it. She was wearing white tights and a pink top. I didn’t really notice if she was wearing anything else. We both came out of the school door together, she on one side and me on the other and headed for the lift. There was a German World War II jeep heavily camouflaged with bales of hay etc. I always had a great deal of affection for this vehicle and the people who drove it and I even happened to like one of the girls on it, whom I was hoping to bump into at some point. We were all waiting there for the lift. The lift came and the jeep drove on, then it looked as if the lift was about to leave. I said “oh no, it’s not going to leave, is it?” but it stayed so the girl and I boarded. At that point, all through this dream Alquin had been playing YOU CAN ALWAYS CHANGE. that was one of the tracks that we were going to play on stage during the concert. I had a feeling that the girl was going to talk about the track, or someone was, and I wanted to keep our selection secret but it was going on and on and on as this dream continued. When I awoke it was actually playing on the computer.

Then we were making arrangements about times to go to do the family banking for the family business that we had. I noticed that I was down to go between 14:30 and 14:45 which was going to be rather difficult because I started work after lunch at 14:00. Trying to evade myself out of the office every day for any length of time without anyone noticing is going to be extremely difficult as I’d already been back that late on a couple of occasions. In the meantime there was something going on in Brighton where there was a killer on the loose. His modus operandi was exactly the same as a series of murders several years ago so naturally the police were following up the trail of the murders committed then. One of them was by a bookcase in a side street so they arranged to set up some kind of dummy person there that this guy could shoot. But a journalist went along with the police and he decided that he’d arrive first and case the area which of course was a really bad thing to do because the guy would notice him but he turned up on his train but there were problems with his train. This meant that the journalist couldn’t get out there at the time that he had planned to be there, maybe 10 minutes before. It was cutting it extremely fine with the journalist doing his dummy run there and the correct kind of time that the murderer committed the crime on the previous occasion at the spot. There were all stories about how the journalist was going to totally wreck the police trap and spoil the show.

When the alarm went off I was in the middle of a dream musing on the state of the world and thinking of a particular woman who had left the oven on too low and too long and had dried out the food that she was trying to cook. There were 11 articles in there altogether to replace articles that had been cooked in the microwave and the previous table-top oven. I had a quick look and the time was only 04:00 so i was obviously a false alarm for some reason – maybe I dreamt it I dunno. Anyway I checked that I wasn’t supposed to be leaving the bed at this time and went back to sleep.

I was home from work and was with Laurence. A woman from work came round. The living room was in a really appalling state with stuff everywhere. I was quite embarrassed and apologised to the woman. I began to pick up clothes but most of them were Roxanne’s. I explained “it’s really difficult trying to live with a preteen daughter. Roxanne is 11 and is at .that age”. I walked out into the hall and threw these clothes upstairs but they missed, fell down and draped all over the stairs again. The woman said that she had a daughter who was 10 but was extremely well-behaved in that matter. I said that Roxanne was very well behaved and was a lovely girl but was in the “attitude” kind of stage. It was very difficult to try to make her see things from maybe our point of view. But it wasn’t just Roxanne’s stuff that was everywhere. It was ours as well. But as I said, it was all extremely embarrassing having people round from work with our place as untidy as it was.

Roxanne was in fact 9 years old when her mother and I separated so I’ve no idea what she was like as a preteen. But she was a normal, happy, healthy, well-adjusted kid when I knew her and there’s no reason to suppose that she was any different than any other kid of that age.

Did I tell you that she was an actress?

It all started one Sunday morning. Where we lived was right on the border between Jette and Laeken (I liked Jette very much) to the north of Brussels and on the house next door to our apartment building was a big sign dating from the 19th Century with the name of the town on it.

One Sunday morning up rolled a TV crew. They set up a sofa in the street underneath the sign and had actors and actresses sit on the sofa and shout “TV Brussel” – the name of the Flemish television company.

Of course, quite a crowd gathered and we looked down from our balcony.

One of the actors was a little girl, black as the ace of spades, and when they looked up they saw Roxanne, blonde as blonde could be with her long hair down past her waist, they called her down and they had the two kids sitting on the sofa, one in contrast to the other, shouting “TV Brussel” together, and she was shown on the cinema and television for months.

They obviously liked what they saw because they took our name and address and a short while afterwards she was asked to appear in a TV film as a schoolkid playing in a school playground. She passed the audition and the screen test and off she went.

Sometimes I wonder if she continued afterwards.

There had then been some sort of firework display in the vicinity. A friend of mine had been to see it and had come back horrified with stories of what had been going on. A little later on we’d been somewhere and come out, and bumped into a woman. She was talking about her 2 daughters who had been to the firework display. One of the daughters had come out with ” mummy why didn’t you disappear as quickly as (her sister)?”. The woman with me again told her story about what she’d seen. As we all turned to go afterwards there was a big sign pinned to the wall over an advertising hoarding “hey Eric, your websites in April had more visits than this discussion” which I thought was quite funny. A little further on we came across an internet box, one of the street internet boxes where all of the connections to the individual homes were wired. This one had been smashed open. All of the glass was smashed and it was difficult to see whether the cables were still intact. There was a policeman there examining it so we had a chat about that, the internet and things in general

Finally there was a dream where the Welsh rugby team were playing the New Zealand All-Blacks rugby team. I was explaining the rules and regulations to someone but I was actually dreaming and speaking in Welsh at the time during the dream. We were interrupted by breakfast coming early but I noticed that on the tray there was no coffee. I asked the boy who was delivering them if he could go along and fetch me a very large coffee from somewhere. Of course, that part about the coffee and the breakfast coming early was certainly a dream. It never ever happened.

Last it may well be, but not “finally”. There was more stuff than this but you really don’t want to know about it, especially if you are eating your tea right now.

It took an age to transcribe these notes as the doctor, the one who had given me the lumbar and thoracic punctures, came to see me.

Apparently the creatine and potassium in my kidneys are preventing them from functioning correctly and what could happen risks being fatal. So they intend to give me all kinds of teratments to try to reduce the levels.

They also have to stop giving me certain medication too, and for that I have to be under constant medical supervision as most of the suppressed medication is my cardiac medication.

All of this is much more serious than it sounds, apparently. They think that I might be at Death’s Door but I mustn’t worry. They’ll do their best to pull me through.

There was the continual procession of nurses and orderlies, and I managed to blag a coffee here and there, but after they coupled me up to a perfusion – apparently I need rehydrating – I didn’t see anyone for hours and it wasn’t until 18:30 that I had a cup this afternoon, much to my dismay.

Ingrid rang me for a chat this afternoon, one of our usual multilingual chats, and I’ve also chatted to Liz, a couple of neighbours and Isabelle the infimière ambulante

Tomorrow I need to chat to the Centre de Re-education and the taxi company to cancel everything that they have arranged for this week as I won’t be here.

Rosemary sent me a brief message to say “it’s snowing here”. I replied “so what? It’s snowing here too”. And it is. Quite heavily too but it’s not sticking – yet. Not that I care because here in The Land Of Yellow And Orange I have the heater going full-tilt and for once in my life I’m warm.

But that’s not all that counts. The food here is pretty dreadful, I’ve had to have another needle in my right hand now for a perfusion as the one in the left arm had to be changed.

This perfusion will last for 24 hours, so I’m told. It’s already had me flat out on my back for several hours. But just now I’ve had to have one of these sodium sulphide drinks so I’ll be out of my head for the next few hours.

Either I’ll be dead to the world in a few minutes and we’ll have a blank page, or else you’ll be in for the most exciting dreams of your life.

Watch this space.

0

Wednesday 20th December 2023 – TODAY I HAVE HAD …

… a lumbar puncture (the fourth that I’ve had if my counting is correct) and a thoracic puncture – one after the other without a pause.

And if you think that a lumbar puncture is bad, you want to try a thoracic puncture. I promise you – a lumbar puncture is a walk in the park in comparison.

Furthermore, even as we speak, I’m having a blood transfusion. You might not believe this, although I’m sure that regular readers of this rubbish will recall this kind of thing happening on several occasions in the past, but despite having had two pochettes of blood during the other night, my blood count has GONE DOWN and I’m still below the critical level.

And so I’m having another one right now.

That’s not the best of it either. They’ve had my blood whizzing around in something that looks as if it’s come from CERN and they have discovered that I have a genetic disorder.

That might explain a lot about a lot of things, but it might also create even more problems because I’ve signed an agreement for them to take my DNA so that they can start work on trying to find the problem.

They’ve told me to contact my family in order that they might undergo a test to identify anything that might arise, but who the hell is my family?
"What about your parents?" asked the doctor.
"My mother’s been dead for years"
"WHat about your father?"
"I never knew who my father was"
"Didn’t your mother ever tell you?"
"To be honest, I don’t think that she ever knew who he was either"

Our family was screwed up right from the very beginning. We were never a family, just a group of people living under the same roof scrambling and fighting for position

And I’m wondering what happens to my DNA sample afterwards. I can see a few issues arising here and there and none of them medical either, at least, from my point of view. However, quite frankly I’m too old, too ill and too tired to care.

Tired is certainly the word because not only was it a really bad day, it was a really bad night too.

Not that there was much of a night to be bad about because I was wide awake at 03:10 and up working, transcribing the dictaphone note, such as they were, at 04:00. There was a battleship that was ostensibly American but was actually owned by a private person and leased to the US Navy. One day he announced that the ship had disappeared. No-one knew where it had gone. A couple of weeks later it turned up in an American port being painted white. When the authorities caught up with it he announced that all the crew had deserted and was having to recruit another crew. The matter then went to Court and it turned out that the crew on board the ship, mainly Japanese, had all been dismissed and the owner was trying to recruit cheaper personnel. The Courts however ruled that the ship’s crew had unalienable right to be on board the ship. If the owner didn’t want them on board the ship, which was quite clear, then the ownership of the ship would pass to the crew, which was exactly what happened. In order to fill in the gaps in their ranks they began to recruit in West Germany. Consequently the ship was to become part of the West German Navy. This was going to lead to all kinds of complications.

And then I was with a girl from school last night, someone who has previously featured at some point or other in my dreams in the past on one or maybe two occasions. Her older brother had a Velocette Venom that he traded in for a Honda K1 750. We (the girl, not the brother) were actually a couple. I was living at home and so was she. She was quite young, small for her age as I remembered her. We’d go on a Saturday night to a little pub that we knew where they weren’t all that particular about the ages of people who went in… "The Rifleman in Volunteer Fields in Nantwich" – ed …. We’d sit in a very quiet corner towards the end of the evening, our arms around each other, and we’d just sleep. We’d wake up and I’d take her home in time so that her parents didn’t suspect anything. After we’d been there for several weeks doing that – we’d go out and do things like go for a walk, go to the cinema or something and end up back at the pub where we’d sleep together for an hour on a bench with our arms around each other. But after we’d been there for several weeks I’d noticed that the pub was becoming more and more crowded. I was thinking that we can’t really go on like this. One night while we were there, she noticed too and made the comment that this place seems to be becoming more and more crowded. I said “well, we don’t really have very much alternative, do we? You still live at home and I still live at home. I might be able one day to have an apartment but at the moment it’s not possible. There isn’t really anywhere else where we can go”. We really ended up just like that again on that particular Saturday night, arms round each other, asleep on a bench, heads against the wall in this particular pub.

It was just like Mark Knopfler and DOWN TO THE WATERLINE – a song all about an adolescent romance with a girlfriend, a Saturday night and simply nowhere to go.

But it was this dream that awoke me. It was one of those that I have every so often, a nice, warm, comfortable dream of the type that I wish would go on for ever where I feel totally at ease and relaxed with a girl really comfortable in my arms.

Being at ease and relaxed are of course things that seems to be happening less and less often these days.

It’s the kind of thing that rarely happens in real life. In fact, it’s only ever happened with two girls.

At one point in my life I was just so stressed out that I could no longer function correctly and everything – absolutely everything – was falling apart. So I’d make a huge effort, go on a trip and p-p-pick up a Penguin – a Percy Penguin in fact.

We’d find a place with running water, because water is very important in my life and the sound of it is relaxing, and we’d just lie there. She had loads of issues (and so did I too, and still have) and she’d wrap herself around me really tightly so that I’d protect her from whatever demons were threatening her. Sometimes she’d even cry on my shoulder as she poured out her problems.

And I’d hold her tight to protect her, her long brown hair all over me, and I’d lie there listening to her breathing as she calmed down and began to sleep. She breathed like a cat, exactly the same frequency and that, and the running water, would calm me down as well. Then I’d be ready for the second round of whatever battle I was fighting at the time

Sometimes I wonder whatever became of her. She would (and did, sometimes) follow me into Hell itself without a pause, a question or a second thought. But she didn’t understand the dangers or the risks and it was really unfair of me to encourage her under those circumstances.

She was someone to whom life had dealt an absolutely wretched hand of cards but I admired her for the way that she fought on regardless.

As for the other girl who drifted into my life, calmed me down and gave me the same kind of comfortable feeling, I’ll let you guess who it was. If you like, you can tell me and I’ll tell you if you’re right or wrong.

Having had Alquin on the playlist just as I was going to bed last night, today I’ve had their three albums going round in a continuous loop all day and that, together with all of my medical issues, has depressed me to a point that I could do with p-p-picking up a Penguin right now.

In fact, I actually crashed out for 5 minutes and it was she who came to check on me. That was rather ironic.

But retournons à nos moutons as they say around here.

The first time that I encountered Alquin was, despite the fact that they are from the Netherlands, Delft in fact, in a dingy damp cellar under a decaying hotel in Crewe in the Spring of 1975 where there was a rock club frequented for a while by the misspent youth of the town.

They are (because they are still going) a bass-driven multi-instrumental band, although they have lost a lot of their power after bassist Hein Mars left them.

In fact I had a bit of a desultory correspondence with them at one time. The bass lines are some of the best that I’ve heard on a consistent basis and all of the songs are pitched in a key and a narrow vocal range that I can actually sing well enough.

After all, you never know. When a young boy called Alan Davey was learning to play bass he played along to Hawkwind records and one day sent off a tape of his efforts to Dave Brock. 10 years later, when Brock was looking for a new bassist after Harvey Bainbridge moved to keyboards, he remembered Davey, and Davey played bass with Hawkwind for 20-odd years in a couple of spells

But meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … cellar, any group that can produce a song LIKE THIS on THEIR DEBUT ALBUM, MARKS has to be worth checking out so I’d been keeping an eye on them.

Their second album, THE MOUNTAIN QUEEN is even better. If you haven’t heard the bass solo near the end of the TITLE TRACK Grahame, give it a listen.

What interests me most about that track, and the bass solo in particular, is the rapport between Hein Mars on bass and Paul Weststrate on drums.

As far as I’m aware, I’ve only ever heard an interaction like that between two musicians on one other occasion. Listen to Simon House on violin and Adrian Shaw on bass during the violin solo in the middle of DAMNATION ALLEY and you’ll see what I mean. Put your headphones on and turn the bass full up.

Now THERE was an underrated rock musician, Simon House and his violin. If I had engineered and produced ASTOUNDING SOUNDS, AMAZING MUSIC, while Robert Calvert reads his poem in the middle of STEPPENWOLF I’d have had long, long pauses after every line while Simon House winds up the magic and builds up the suspense and tension.

But anyway, more Alquin is going round. So, in the words of the Mountain Queen
"take your time and join me
I’ll tell you an endless story
Rest your head beside me
In that fading light."

And right now I’d settle for almost anyone’s head beside me, not just Percy Penguin’s or the other person whose name I didn’t mention. I don’t want to drag her into all of this rubbish any more than she’s been dragged into it already.

0

Tuesday 18th April 2023 – TODAY AT THE …

… hospital was even quicker than yesterday.

For a start, I didn’t have to sign in. Then I knew where I was going, and they didn’t have to weigh me or give me an electrogram.

And with the catheter already being in my arm, I didn’t need to have one fitted, so it was simply a case of giving me the medication.

Consequently I was in there at 08:45 and on my way home by 11:30. I even managed to catch the second half of my Welsh class.

Not that I felt much like it because I had another horrible night. And for some reason or other I awoke bolt-upright in the middle of a dream at 06:59 exactly so I fell out of bed immediately, just so that I can say that I actually did beat the alarm once again.

But not by very much.

It’s not possible to have a shower with my arm swathed in bandages so I had a good stand-up wash and then Caliburn and I headed for the hills.

The people at Avranches are really quite nice and pleasant. They have a good sense of humour too which always helps.

Back here afterwards I had a strong coffee and some of my fruit bread toasted with plenty of butter and then joined my Welsh class. Surprisingly it all passed off quite well and I was surprised.

After the lesson I sat down and listened to the dictaphone. And just look at where I went to during the night. It’s really no wonder that I was feeling so exhausted this morning. I started off in my apartment making breakfast. I put the beans on and a few other bits and pieces. Then I went into the bathroom to fetch some sliced bread from the freezer. I must have had the bread out previously and forgotten to put it back because it was just sitting on the shelf looking moth-eaten as if rats had been eating it. Of course there are no rats or mice anywhere in my apartment. I took 3 slices that looked really sad and put them down on top of the worktop. A huge pile of ants were suddenly disturbed from somewhere and started to scurry round all over the bread. That lot went immediately into the bin. Before that I forgot to say that when I went to go into the bathroom I couldn’t see a thing. I had to play around with the fuses in the wall to switch the fuse back on that control the lights at that end of the apartment. After the mess of the bread I went back into the kitchen. The beans were burning, the toast was smoking as if some bread from before was stuck in there and was on fire. It was all becoming a right mess with everything being burnt and I had nothing to eat.

And then I repeated the same dream pretty much again – about the bread and the kitchen etc being on fire and being eaten by ants and so on that I had earlier. I step back into dreams fairly often but to actually repeat one is rather strange.

Later on some Italian couple involved in some secret society had upset some group of Londoners. We’re going back into the days of Sherlock Holmes. He was investigating this. The Italian man had had an encounter with these four men just after he left home that turned very ugly. They then went to the woman’s house, rang the door and made her answer by taunting her on the doorstep. Sherlock Holmes had crept around the back and rang the bell at the back. The woman had to leave the people at the front and go to the back where she promptly fainted into the arms of Holmes. He quite simply set about the four of her attackers with a hatchet. Three of them he attacked but the fourth one took him by surprise with a pitchfork. He was lucky that he wasn’t badly hurt with the pitchfork but stood his ground and demolished these four guys with his small axe

Break into a stranger’s house and have a huge fight with him and then leave as a kind of pre-emptive strike against something and that really is exactly what I dictated. It’s as if I’ve missed something off the front). But in one particular house I noticed that he had all the ice trays in the freezer of water filling up but they were stacked one on top of another so as they froze they were gradually rising up being pushed out by the frozen water underneath them. I thought “what a good space-saving idea this is”.

The next one is payday. I just received my money and I was dancing about quite happily to some music on the computer. There was mush more to it than this but I can’t remember the rest of it at all.

Then we had 2 iguanas fighting in a hospital. They ended up right by a patient but suddenly a blast of cold air through the air vents on the floor sent them up in the air a little bit and stopped them from fighting. Everyone who was watching them was really amazed at this.

I’d also been away in Canada with a few friends. One of them was Alison. We’d had a much better time than usual because we’d learnt to have better value out of our time than we had done in the past. Then it was time to go back to school. I arrived rather later than I intended but there was still very few people there. I bumped into that girl Liz – not Liz Fox but the other one, her friend who was also called Liz but whose name I can’t now remember after all these years but I can see her vividly. I wanted to have a talk to her but she said “hello” and walked past. I could hear a couple of people gossiping about her from when she was at Primary School. There was some kind of discussion going on about someone. My friend from the Scottish Borders was there involved in this. The guy who was doing most of the talking saw me listening and trying to work out who was the subject. He passed me a Government report of a tribunal. The name wasn’t published but I could see from a lot of the evidence that I had a good idea who it was but I couldn’t put a name to it. I carried on reading it. I could see after a while that he was starting to become impatient. I ended up back in my classroom. A couple of girls came in. They began to talk. We mentioned vaguely the trip that I’d been on. I explained that it was really good but I didn’t go into any detail about it. We began to discuss something else. While we were there someone pulled up in a car. He made a really bad job of parking, left the car and staggered off. We could see that he was totally drunk. I asked who he was. They told me his name. We watched him. Someone said that he had left his 2 kids at home cooking. I’d never seen anyone so drunk as this and still standing on their 2 feet. There was lots more to this too but I can’t remember it now either.

Every now and again a dream comes up that reminds me of my school days and all of the wasted opportunities that I let slip through my fingers while I was there. The first part of that dream was another one that brought back quite a few “if only …” moments and how things really ought to have been so different.

Finally Nerina and I were having one of our big disputes last night. It led to me planning on leaving. I started to prepare my stuff. That meant going home which was a long way so I needed to make sure that I had everything. I couldn’t find the CD that I’d bought so I began to search for it everywhere. After a while Nerina came home. I asked her if she knew where it was. She told me to listen and I could hear a CD playing in the distance. I didn’t recognise it at first but eventually I worked out that it was Steve Winwood singing. That was the one that I wanted. She’d been recording it. She said that it had finished recording so she took it out and gave it back to me. I carried on packing. She was sitting on the sofa. I began to pass her things. There were these 4 oven gloves. I threw them to her and 1 hit her, 2 landed right in front of her and the other landed exactly where I wanted it to be, on the back of the settee behind her. It led to some kind of good-natured discussion after that. I reminded her of the time that she was baking a cake and it all went wrong. She threw it at the wall and I teased her about it and she began to smile. I said that it’s a shame that things changed in our relationship. Again there was much more to it than this that I can’t remember. At one point I was walking down Coleridge Way. There was an argument between 2 lorries, one a cement mixer. It went past the other lorry bu actually driving up on the kerb and scattering the pedestrians. Then it came back and did it again. When I reached where it was there were several pedestrians including a couple of kids lying on the pavement covered in blood as if they’d been struck by this cement mixer. It really was a strange dream.

It’s also another wasted opportunity too but I can really understand that regardless of anything else, she wouldn’t have thought it a wise idea to throw everything up and come off into the great wide-open world with someone like me, married or not.

The rest of the day has been spent finishing off some notes for a radio programme that’s half-completed, and then I made a very brief start on pairing off some music for the next radio programme. I’ll do some more of that tomorrow if I have another short day at the hospital. I know that it won’t be a short day on Thursday because I’ve already been told that the neurologist there is going to put me through my paces on Thursday afternoon.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg. And I’m not sure what happened but my rice and veg were cooked to perfection tonight. I wish that it would turn out like that every time.

There’s plenty of my delicious stuffing left so it’ll be an excellent leftover curry tomorrow. There’s plenty of soya yoghurt to add to it instead of the soya cream and I have some naan bread dough in the freezer that I’ll have to take out of the freezer before I go to the hospital.

It sounds as if it might be a really good curry tomorrow and I hope that it is, especially as I seem to have got the hang of this naan bread.

And having found a good menu on the internet for vegan hash browns, I’ll be moving my meals into further uncharted territory in early course.

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